‘This is Out of my Jurisdiction’. The Court of Justice Confirms that the Exercise of Administrative Functions does not Get Along with Preliminary References: the CityRail Case (C-453/20)

In the CityRail case, the Court has continued a recent ‘restrictive’ trend that has seen the number of inadmissible preliminary ruling requests growing at the same rate as the Court’s workload. Indeed, even though the above-mentioned requirements had actually been met in this preliminary ruling request, the Court highlighted the absence of the minimal functional requirements which characterise judicial proceedings, and therefore concluded that the Czech Transport infrastructure access authority (Úřad pro přístup k dopravní inastructure, ‘the Czech Authority’) was not a ‘court or tribunal’ for the purposes of Article 267 TFEU, the preliminary ruling request therefore being inadmissible.